Fr. James Martin, SJ helps us understand Purgatory in a video interview with Busted Halo where he says “So there’s purgatory… so what”.

Before the second Vatican Council, limbo was a “theological hypothesis,” believed to be an eternal state of natural happiness reserved for unbaptized infants and young children who died before reaching the age of seven, which was considered to be “age of reason.” Pope Benedict XVI highlighted what the latest version of the Catechism states, which says:

1261 As regards children who have died without Baptism, the Church can only entrust them to the mercy of God, as she does in her funeral rites for them. Indeed, the great mercy of God who desires that all men should be saved, and Jesus’ tenderness toward children which caused him to say: “Let the children come to me, do not hinder them,” allow us to hope that there is a way of salvation for children who have died without Baptism.

Hell is the ultimate absence of God. In this state of being, we can never unite with our God and have rejected God through our own free choice.